The operation was a success, it seems, and the surgeon said that he couldnâ€™t see any reason why we shouldnâ€™t be able to have a baby.

It appears that that was, unfortunately, far from the truth. (For once) I won’t go into details suffice to say that we were told that it looks unlikely that Jane will be able to conceive naturally, and that our best chance of having a baby will be with IVF (In vitro fertilisation). The waiting list, on which our names now appear, is between 15 – 18 months.

Under the NHS we are given three goes, free. If we were to go private the wait would be reduced to between 4 and 6 months, I recall, but would cost around £3,000. And for every 1 private treatment you receive you are deducted 1 free NHS treatment. Jane has age on her side, being under 30 years. But even then the success rate is just under 45%. But forty-five is quite a big number. And one of my favourites.

I spent much of the rest of the day, in committee meetings, in a state of shock, and hurting; as Jane did on the other side of the New Town in the DoE offices. It will take some time for the news to sink in. We totally weren’t expecting that, especially after the ‘good news’ that we’d received after Jane’s day (and a half) op.

Still, looking on the bright side, at least in April 2006 when this post finishes and we’re turfed out into the street we won’t have to worry about keeping the baby dry in our cardboard box!

Just back from another sortie into the Scottish Borders, to wish my Uncle Lewis a happy birthday and to run some AntiVirus and AntiSpyware software on her PC, thanks to Blake’s comment earlier this week.

I ran both PC Tools’ Spyware Doctor and AdAware SE, but they both reported absolutely no spyware at all on Mum’s PC. So, to be on the safe side, I ran Norton AntiVirus 2004. It reported 3 infected files, all with ‘download.adware’.

I left Norton to scan while Jane and I drove back to Edinburgh. Mum phoned us as we were pulling up outside the house to report the findings, and I talked her through the offending files deletions. I wait to see if it has restored the ability to uninstall applications from Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs.